Asher Boersma is the coordinator of the research unit.

The working title of his post-doc project is “Aktion, Registration, Distribution: Media practices in the German Forest(s) in times of climate change.” It asks how a variety of actors use media to deal with changes and uncertainty in a field with such a prominent cultural history. He studied Media and Performance Studies at Utrecht University and National University of Singapore, taught at Utrecht University and at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science, and did research at the Utrecht Data School (Utrecht University). He obtained his Phd Locating Media, a DFG Graduate School at Universität Siegen, and also worked at the twin institute Media of Cooperation, a DFG Special Collaborative Research Centre.

His dissertation (2020, Media Studies) was titled “The Shore Turns the Ship: A (Historical) Media Ethnography of Inland Navigation and Control Rooms.” Central to this is trying to understand how near constant mobility in an otherwise mostly settled society is organised.

Publications

2020

‘Follow the Action: Understanding the Conflicting Temporalities of Ships, River, Authorities and Family Through Distributed Ethnography’, Mobilities 15 (5): 661-676.

‘Chips, Splinters and Emails from a German Workshop: On STS Concepts in Academic Justification’, mit Judith Willkomm, Wie forschen mit den Science and Technology Studies? eds. A. Wiedmann, K. Wagenknecht, P. Goll, A. Wagenknecht, 272-296. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

2018

‘Mediatisation of Work: A History of Control Room Practice’, in Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 2: 113-132.

2017

Paßmann, Johannes; Boersma, Asher: “Unknowing Algorithms. On transparency of un-openable black boxes.” Van Es, Karin; Schaefer, Mirko-Tobias (eds.): The Datafied Society: Social Research in the Age of Big Data. Amsterdam.